Mar 31, 2009

Is this a surrender to the power that controls the contemporary lives, where learning is important for one to live comfortably?

Is this my cry to go against the current and am I believing in my own power that I do not want to become part of the insitute, of the community at college?

A year ago, I would literally eat up my studying and surprize myself with my assignements. Today, I find myself thinking that having to abide by the rules and study is a form of power whose control is eating me up from the inside.

Where does the fear of power start and end?

Why am I so weak that I'm about to my life away because of this idea of power. I do not want to conform to rules, I want to be Control Free.... unbound to whatever force and whatever thought. Howver, I find myself drowning more and more in this controversy of perception.

Most things have become blurry and dizzy. It feels I'm spinning around and getting nowhere.

I want to study and learn but no commitments i can deliver... Hence, chaos of my life is getting organized and charted along these lines.

Mar 25, 2009

I’d like to follow a friend of mine in his search for a real Lebanese mind, in his scratching of the Lebanese quizzical mind. Coming closer to the elections is a big fear I’m harbouring day after day.Aren’t we done with all the acts and all the plays everyone has been producing so far? After all we’ve been through as Lebanese haven’t we yet, acquired a critical sense to recognize the illusions thrown at us from the left and from the right?How do I by far come to peace with my people when their community mind is so set afar from mine? Should I alienate myself as a reader of such a text of life? Should invest in a better reading of such a puzzled consciousness? Should I become a barthian living creature? Or should I crumble and retreat to my shell?Perplexing questions pop into my head. Am I writing a new narrative or just doing a re-reading of the same old book?What I want to do is become the writerly history of a nation. Don’t we all know that nations are narrations? Thus, I would become the narration of my people. I will incubate my all within any narration but following the status quo of this moment, I think I shall never achieve my goal if I keep on reading and not writing. We all have the illusion that all nations have their great moments in history, that all people are great. But the truth lies beneath the small, secret and dark lobbies. Seeing the truth with my own eyes has set me on the margins of patriotic people. Should I challenge you to accept and read my discourse or should I dare to tell the part of the truth which I know? Failing me is not an option and I think that I’ll be fighting to the end. But whoever falls first will suffer greatly. Would it be me or my self....? Does this stir any meanings?I believe that Sarasine by Balzac holds duplicity in meaning. It is at the same time the life of a castrated persona but also the duality in character within one’s self. The edge of duplicity comes between the lines of the story where little by little the enigma is revealed and the signifiers cross-multiply and generate another signifier. It is the story of the elusive signified. Are we in Lebanon living the same model? Are we on the search of an elusive signified and are we drowning amidst an ocean of signifiers and totally blinded to muffle the rescue calls?Towards the lighthouse marches the band,Amidst the gloomy skies lies the rage of gods.Harvest is coming soon,But the crops are not bloomed.Is this the end of the dream?Is this what I think it seems?

Mar 7, 2009

Divine power searches the night,For a human mind to feed upon.And while the priests have gone astrayAnd the people...Their minds, devoured by heavenly lies,Hallowed sins and oppressed desires.

The joys of life surrendered in front ofA callous clout from high above.“Pray and Feast” the lord thus said,“Be my sheep”, and they obeyed.Blinded are they to follow that path,To wander that land, and to lead the march.

The door loses its desire to sleep,And the feet awaken the fire in the lake of the leaves of the creamy woodland.The guillotine stands in the water, feeding its eyes with the sparkling of the cotton sheets.My dress shot the veil,And the veil burned the hair,And the hair locked the heart,And the heart shattered in chocolate bars,And the lies roll like a summer breeze.And then, I went to sleep and drank my fingers,And I ate the wine of my dreams,The hourglass married the clouds,Then the wind begot the grass of the wailing fox of the market.And I woke up to dream again...

Mar 5, 2009

After reading my friends' posts on the Parasite/Host theory, I was reminded of the Matrix movie and its two worlds; a world of REAL and a world of agents. Aren't we - as literature students- living in a similar dimension? I think of us as the hosts and the parasites of society. We live our college lives hosting the thoughts and theories of those who were before us, the thinkers since Plato till the contemporary critics. At the same time, too, we become the parasites in our society. We live with great ideas and ideals, controversial thinking and non-conforming norms. We host them, embrace them and get inlfuenced by them. And what does society do or think? It, sometimes, marginalise us. It tries to destroy us - being a parasite, a harmful agent in their chain of life. But, we are part of that chain. For without parasites, the food chain is destroyed and decomposers no longer do their jobs and in the end, mother nature decays.

During this week, the Vatican hosted a seminar to discuss Darwin's Evolution Theory. After a century and a half, the most influencial power in the world consented NOW on discussing the genius, the man who paved the way to criticism; criticism of the world in which we live. Once being the parasite, Darwin is now getting his VIP ticket into religious society that controls the public. How much would it take society to accept the parasites' thought such as Derrida, Miller, Serres and many others. How much would it take my enviroment to accept me.. us as changing agents among itself.

We, students, are the hosts to the spirit of the text.

The text becomes our parasite within.

We become parasited by the text.

We parasite society.

Society becomes the host and the parasite.

Hence, why are we denied the freedom of thought, speech and the force to change what's around us?

The city rat and the country rat parasited the sleeping man and he in his turn parasited their lunch together. this is an unbreakable chain. Why not go against the current and tolerate the change we shall cause around us?

The question remains unchanged and the answer is never there... WHY???????

Mar 2, 2009

I’ve recently read an article by J. H. Miller: “Studies among the ruins”, and I was interested to know that this great author and thinker has become an advocate of the digital culture that has invaded our daily lives. In this article, Miller says that the digital culture hasn’t demolished literature, but that the internet and the mass media have given a new view of literature. In other words, this digital culture has not contributed to the end of Literature but the end of a classical view of literature. There’s this changing wind that formed a new wave of though and writing, the once thought of psychoanalysis or literature or love letters still exist but under another shape or form.Henceforth, texts are being studied instead of works. The classical literary criticism of a text has been – to a certain extent - the study of the genre and its specificity and their purpose in the text. But today, things have changed: there’s been a major shift of roles. Instead of centring the texts under one view which is the “norm” for reading that text; the decentring of things has engaged people, all people, to reason, rationalize and question all texts and all ‘works’.However, this new attitude created some controversies. The tolerance degree of decentring among readers is what would affect the new literary studies. However, it has always been the case. It‘s always been the reader who first affected the spread or not of a book. Books were either welcomed or challenged. Of course the many appraisals of books by reviewers change the view of most readers, and the radical changes that have come up under the light of the digital culture are not only challenged but also feared, first by the critics, who seem to see a threat in opening up to new dimension of critical thinking, and second by the masses of readers who wouldn’t digest this change, yet.In this new world, under this new-fangled light of thought, things are to get controversial. The development of human thought and the onward movement of the human race are a curse and bliss. They open new doors but release the traditional and the old fashions. One may read a text or novel under the light of the traditional or one may take his/her readings farther into the digital word and come up with a new view; one may question the idea, the thought, the democracy, the politics and the norms of things in life.The literature of our time has become a new colonizing agent, according to Miller. The studies among the ruins, somehow, have become a virtual reality. There are no more norms or orthodoxy in literature. The discourse of the new age fits every profile and every mind. The monopoly of reading was conquered by GLOBALIZATION. And thusly, all of our thought and writing goes around this one power that drenched the world from its senses into interactive insignificance.

About Me

I am a memory,
A flashback, a thought,
A falling image,
A silent ghost.
Roaming above you,
In the deadly cold.
Calling upon you,
Come, behold:
The magic moment,
The flattering scene;
The awakened spirit
No one's ever seen.
The curtains fall,
Cheer and applause.
Sighs and relief.
I am but a thief!